Web-based protocols often require the discovery of host policy or
metadata, where host is not a single resource but the entity
controlling the collection of resources identified by URIs with a
common host as defined. While these protocols have a
wide range of metadata needs, they often define metadata that is
concise, has simple syntax requirements, and can benefit from storing
its metadata in a common location used by other related protocols.

Because there is no URI or a resource available to describe a host,
many of the methods used for associating per-resource metadata (such
as HTTP headers) are not available. This often leads to the
overloading of the root HTTP resource (e.g. 'http://example.com/')
with host metadata that is not specific to the root resource (e.g. a
home page or web application), and which often has nothing to do it.

This memo registers the "well-known" URI suffix 'host-meta' in the
Well-Known URI Registry established by,
and specifies a simple, general-purpose metadata document for hosts,
to be used by multiple Web-based protocols.